“Everyone saw one another’s real faces that morning. . .”
Many people join a church for community, for solidarity, for a place to belong. This sermon by the Rev. Marlin Lavanhar, senior minister at All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, OK, illustrates just how powerful that belonging can be.
Rev. Lavanhar and his family suffered the terrible loss of their three-year-old daughter, Sienna, last spring. This was the beautiful, heart-felt message he had for his congregation on Homecoming Sunday, four months later:
Finding Our Song
By Rev. Marlin Lavanhar, All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, September 10, 2006
Once upon a time, back when people still had time, back before time was something we put into little circles and carried around on our wrists, there was a time when the world burnt down. There was nothing left on the face of the planet but a thick layer of coal and ash. All that survived was a bird named Ekanchu. And Ekanchu flew all over searching for signs of life. But he found none.
Ekanchu thought that he should try to find the special tree, the one where the holy men (the shamans of the community) went, in order to allow their spirits to rise into the heavens and descend into the dark places. Ekanchu figured if only he could find that tree, then maybe, maybe he could find life.
Eventually, after looking with no success for days and days, a trickster appeared, because of course the trickster never dies. And the trickster told Ekanchu: “When one of your feathers falls to the ground, the place where it lands will be the place of the special tree.” While flying around looking for the tree, eventually a feather fell from his wing. And Ekanchu followed it down to the ground to the place where he thought he would surely see the tree. But all he found was more coal and ashes. He’d been tricked.At that point Ekanchu lost all hope. He picked up a piece of coal from that place and did all that he could think to do; he started to play it like a drum. He pounded on that piece of coal all night, until he finally became so tired he fell asleep. In the morning, when he woke up, he noticed that out of that piece of coal was growing a little green sprout, a tendril of life. And that green tendril was the beginning of the rebirth of the world.
This is an ancient tale from Brazil that I heard told by story-teller Michael Meade. It speaks to something I’ve experienced since my daughter Sienna died 4 months ago. Because when that happened I felt burnt, as if everything in my life was scorched and in ruins. It was hard to imagine anything green and hopeful growing out of that lifeless ash.
The question we all want to know the answer to is, how do we get from the scorched, burnt-out, lifeless places in our lives to a place where new life is possible? We can take one clue from Apache culture. In their tradition, they took people who were afflicted and they moved them into the center of their community. To this day the Apache have a saying, “The afflicted are Holy.” Once the afflicted were placed in the center of the village, everyone came and shared what they could with them. And in doing so, they believed that not only were the afflicted comforted, but each person in the community was healed. Each day people came, bringing food and songs and messages and gifts. And in doing so, the entire community was healed.
This is what you have done for me, my wife Anitra and our son Elias. You have placed us in the center of this community and surrounded us with love and gifts of song and beauty and food and hugs and tears. And every time we do this for someone we too experience healing.
Over the past four months this congregation has grown closer and more real. Beginning at the 85th anniversary celebration at the Brady Theatre in April, people left feeling part of one community with a significant heritage and tradition. It didn’t matter if they joined when Dr. Wolf was the Senior Minister or Brent Smith or me. We could all feel in our bones that we are one church made up of many generations. And each generation is building on the legacy of the ones who came before.
Then, barely two weeks later, Sienna unexpectedly died – three days after her third birthday. She was born into this church, and dedicated on this chancel by Dr. John Wolf on Easter Sunday two years ago. And she was a ubiquitous presence around here. If you didn’t know Sienna, you didn’t come to church very often. Or else you’re new or visiting us today. If that’s the case, welcome, you’re going to learn a lot about who we are this morning.
The day after Sienna died, Dr. Wolf came back to this pulpit to preach. Due to health concerns, he hadn’t preached a sermon for almost 8 years. He did not expect to ever preach from this pulpit again. You may not know what was at stake for John. Moments before he walked into the sanctuary that fateful morning, Pat Newman asked John if he needed anything. John handed Pat a little bottle and said, “Take this and sit in the front row. If I pass out up there give me two squirts in each nostril.” It was a bottle of nitro-glycerin. Pat still describes trying to discreetly read the fine print on the label as John proceeded down the aisle. Poor Pat! When he asked, he was expecting John to request something like “a cold glass of water.” But if John was rising up to do what he needed to do that morning, Pat certainly would too. Fortunately for all of us, Pat didn’t have to.
I wasn’t here of course, but I understand this place was packed to the rafters for two services. And I’ve heard that everyone saw one another’s real faces that morning. Even people who have known each other and seen each other in church for 30 years, saw in each other’s faces a different, more raw and genuine quality. All masks were off, all pretension, and the facades that separate us were wiped away. We had grown closer as a community.
These experiences were intensified by the death of young Oscar Johnson eight weeks later. And this church surrounded the Johnsons as well. Without blinking, you put them in the center of the community. During this time, the invisible lines of love that connect our hearts and our lives became visible. The question now is, are we going to float back up to the surface level of relating, like we often find ourselves doing in the world outside these walls, or will we continue to deepen our connections and continue to feel safe exposing our true selves to one another?
In the Apache tradition, the afflicted are holy, and by putting them in the center of the community, everyone is healed. Song and music is a huge part of that tradition, just as it is a major part of our life together in this church. Keep in mind that tragedy is not something anybody can do anything about – that’s what makes it a tragedy. The tragic events are unfixable. So all we can do is weave beauty into and around the tragedy. And in doing so we begin to make it bearable, survivable, possible to go on.
We lace songs of beauty right into the tragedy. It’s interesting that the root of the word “tragedy” actually has the word “song” in it. From the Greek tragoidia, we have oidia – meaning “odes” or “songs.” It is a clue that the medicine to heal our pain is in the pain itself. Like in the story of E-kan-choo, when all seemed destroyed, all that was left to do was bang on a piece of coal like a drum. And in the morning out of that lifeless coal, came a green tendril of hope.
Songs are an audible form of hope. They are medicine injected into the darkness of despair. You may have noticed that it is nearly impossible to sing if you are feeling despair. Days after Sienna died, I participated in our weekly staff chapel. I remember trying to sing the beautiful hymns, but all I could do was mouth the words with tears streaming down my face. I couldn’t gather enough breath to sing. But the sounds of others singing for me and around me kept me going.
I’m reminded of Vedran Smallavic, the cellist of Sarejevo. You may remember, during the war in Bosnia in the early 90’s he played his cello in the center of town every afternoon. With bombs crashing down around him in all directions and surrounded by chaos and ruin, all he could think to do in response was play music. He carried a chair and his cello into the center of the plaza every day, and in the face of senseless death and ruin, defied it all.
[Note to reader: At this point during the service, a cellist came forward and played the hymn “How Can I Keep From Singing?”]
Despite everything – how can we keep from singing? Despite war, despite death, despite the destruction of the twin towers and the life we once knew. The only response that makes any sense in these situations is to create beauty and music.
This summer I had the great pleasure of spending time with Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield. He had just lost a good friend under tragic circumstances, and I shared with him, and the others who were with us, my terrible loss and heartbreak. At one point, he showed us an old palm leaf that he carries with him that was given to him by his first Buddhist master. When the master was training, back in the 1890’s in Thailand, the monks didn’t have paper and pencils. In order to learn the sutras, which are the Buddhist scriptures chanted in song, they would take a sharp stick and use it to press the words into the skin of a palm leaf. You couldn’t really see the words, but there were indentations where the letters were. Later they would rub ashes and charcoal into the crevices they had made on the leaf – and the song would appear.
As we shared our grief through stories and rituals, Jack explained that what we were doing was rubbing charcoal into the crevices of our souls, watching and waiting for our song to appear. Because each person is born with a song, with a dream, with gifts to offer the world. And that is what we teach the children of this church. We do not tell them they are born sinners in need of cosmic redemption. We tell them that they are born gifted, and each person’s religious task is to discover and realize their gifts and then give them back for the good of the world.
Each of us is born with a dream inside, yearning to be lived. And we all have a song that is uniquely our own – a song that the world needs to hear. Our unique song is the medicine to heal this afflicted world. But in life there are many things that can block the unfolding of our gifts, or that can rob us of the breath we need to sing our song. Sometimes these blocks come from parents, or education systems that do not fit our religion, the influence of the media, tragedies we experience, or the addictions we develop. There are many things that can block the unfolding of our true nature. We are born into a culture that has mostly forgotten the fact that each person comes into the world with gifts. But our soul knows it, and our souls are often offended by the lack of recognition. The purpose of this church is to help draw out the genius and gifts inside each child and each person.
It can be said in many different ways. This church is here to help us become the person God wants us to become. Or, this church is here to help us realize our highest calling. However you choose to articulate it, I must tell you the church has done this for me time and time again. Sienna’s death could have lead to the death of the dream that lives inside of me. For a time it took my breath away and I wasn’t guaranteed that it would ever come back. But floating upon the ocean of your love, I was kept from drowning.
These gifts we come into the world with, they are not really our gifts. They are the world’s gifts with which we are entrusted. To not realize and offer what we have inside to the world is to miss our life’s purpose. Your soul has a project in this life. We must each find the project that gives our life meaning. We are here so our unique song can be sung and added to the chorus of love and hope that the world so desperately needs to hear.
In tribal cultures all around the globe, it has been long understood that each person comes into this life with something essential to offer. And it is the job of the elders of the community to help each child to nurture and discover whatever it is they have come to give. The survival of the tribe depends on each child bringing forth his or her gifts. They believe the very survival of the world depends on it.
At All Souls we are here to nurture one another’s dreams. To become elders for one another and our children, so that the light of those dreams never goes out. To remind each other that we came into this world with sacred cargo to deliver. And it is our high calling to discover and deliver the unique gifts we have. The survival of the world does indeed depend on it. And at those times when all we can see before us are endless mounds of coal and ash, we are here to help each other rub that ash into the crevices of our souls until our special song appears.
You know, I love you. And Anitra and Elias love you as well. And we want you to know, that we feel how much you love us too. It’s great to be back!
Hallelujah, Hallelujah.
Amen.
Source: Rev. Marlin Lavanhar, senior minister at All Souls Unitarian Church, Tulsa, OK, Sunday, September 10, 2006
Tags: beginning, children, community, connection, grief, hope, Marlin Lavanhar, songs
